


When The Beat Of My Drum (Meets The Beat Of Your Heart)

by nightships



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: CS AU, F/M, Physical Therapist Emma, Surfer AU, Surfer Killian, Surfing, cs fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-22 13:33:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3730789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightships/pseuds/nightships
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pro-surfer Killian Jones survives a shark attack, leaving him with only one hand. During his rehabilitation, he meets physical therapy student Emma Swan. She makes it her quest to help him return to the ocean where he belongs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To help you read, because this is a bit of a unique setup: All chapters after the first take place during the first chapter (except for the little epilogue, which I don't want to spoil!) I originally wrote this as a one-shot, and then I had a few requests that I write out each of the items on their goals list as chapters. Enjoy!

Emma practically  _hydroplanes_  into the parking lot of the therapy center that morning. The leftover puddles from last night’s rain are all doing their best to add to the humidity in the coastal air, making her skin feel sticky before she’s even three steps away from her bug.

Of course, she’s too busy hugging her bag to her chest to care, making sure the downpour stays off her paperwork. Uniforms can dry, but once ink bleeds it stays smudged forever.

The automatic doors welcome her in and she swings toward the employee locker rooms without a glance at the patients waiting in the small reception area. She’s late, she’s almost  _ridiculously_  late, and stopping to look at the same group of sunburnt elderly patients she helps on a bi-weekly basis is only going to make it worse.

The locker room is blissfully quiet when she enters, even though the chill from the A/C unit is sending goosebumps all across her soaked legs. She tears her running shoes off and slips on a pair that her boss has deemed appropriate for work instead, right after she slides her clinic pants on over her running capris. It takes her another two minutes to find the ridiculous name badge Regina insists on her wearing at all times and fix it on her polo but then she’s out the door again, ponytail swinging over her shoulder as she practically jogs back into the main treatment room.

Except Mrs. Lucas isn’t sitting on the bench and waiting for her with a laundry list of complaints when she pushes the door open. Mrs. Lucas isn’t in the room at all. Emma nearly drops her binder when she sees the patient that is waiting for her. He’s a complete stranger but she knows  _exactly_  who he is.

"You’re —"

"Can we please skip the awkward introductions, lass? It takes so much time."

His eyes are too blue. She’s seen them dozens of times on the local news and shrugged it off, attributing the color to some kind of magic camerawork or post-processing. She and her friends definitely did  _not_  go see the surfing documentary that featured him for all of three minutes when their local theater held a special showing, that’s for sure.

He’s staring at her like she’s grown a third eye on her forehead, Emma realizes with a jolt, and she realizes there’s been about two minutes of actual silence between them since he last spoke.

"On second thought, I think I preferred awkward."

Emma gives herself exactly one second to school her face into something that resembles professionalism and clutches her binder closer, stepping in his general direction.

"Come to work on the remaining hand, I’m guessing?"

He’s smiling at her like she’s given him a winning lottery ticket or something, and she’s glad she didn’t choose to tread carefully around him like the rest of the world seems to be. It’s been a few months since his story faded from the press — a twilight surfing competition gone awry that left him with several broken ribs and a missing hand — and it’s not like avoiding it while she’s working on him will help anyone. Year after year their little coastal town airs footage from the attack. Sometimes interviews of him air afterward, and while the scar on his arm looks like it’s healing nicely, she still sees shadows in his eyes when someone brings it back up. Something inside her always boils when they actually track him down at competitions (ones he only ever judges for now, for reasons she didn’t understand until she saw his file herself) and surprise him with questions about it when he thinks he’s being interviewed about how the competitors surfed that day.

"You’re new here, aren’t you?"

"I can get someone else for you if you want," Emma answers hurriedly, turning for the door and biting her tongue afterward as punishment for barely being able to say two words to the man — to her  _patient_  — without trailing off into her own mind.

"That’s not what I meant," he apologizes, reaching out for her with the hand he has left. "You just…the last therapist that worked on me nearly choked on her gum when she saw my arm."

He raises his scarred stump in a big of a shrug, as if it’s something he deals with every day, and the boiling starts in her chest again.

"Well," she responds, slapping the binder down on the table next to him and letting her hands fall to her sides, "I don’t have any gum."

She didn’t think it was possible for him to smile wider, but apparently it is.

* * *

"Ten more circles, and then I want you to switch to going backwards, okay?" Emma’s taking notes on his range of motion and his stamina as he stands in the middle of the room and swings his arms around in full rotations, standing behind him so she can watch for any strange muscle patterns or bone movement. The white lines of his scars curl like the crests of a wave against his tanned skin, interrupted every so often by freckles that seemed to trail all the way down his forearms.

Then there’s the worn, sun-bleached tank shirt he’s wearing, the one Emma is deliberately  _not_  paying attention to as she scratches her pen against her notepad. It looks like he’s worn it every day of his life for the past eight years, and for all she knows he has. He might be a bit of a public figure, but he’s still a total stranger.

"Any new pain?" She asks, just to break the silence. "Anything moving when it shouldn’t?"

"Not a bit," he responds evenly, reversing the direction of his arms. "But I wish you’d come stand where I can look at you while we talk."

"We aren’t really talking."

"Ah, but we  _could_  be.” He turns and peeks at her over his own shoulder, giving her a smirk she’s never seen on the news. He’s always been kind of bashful and diplomatic with the anchors that interview him after competitions, even when he’s only spectating instead of judging, but now he’s got Emma wondering if it’s a matter of trust, not nerves.

So she swings around, steering clear of his arms as she comes to lean up against the bench he was previously perched on and figuring she can track his rotations just as well from the front. She quirks a brow at him afterward when he continues on, waiting for him to say something this time around.

"Well? Are we talking yet?"

"Depends. What do you like talking about? I’m guessing work is the first thing people usually ask about, and the last thing you want me to ask about.”

"It’s definitely up there," she snorts, toeing the floor with her stupid squeaky sneakers.

"I used to surf for a living, in case you were wondering," he says with a serious tilt of the head and a sparkle in his eye that’s anything but. She feels a strange swoop in her stomach at the look and she promptly sets that thought right next to the one about his shirt.

"Ah, so you’re  _that_  Killian Jones.”

"Pleasure’s all mine." He lets his arms swing down to his sides as they finish the exercise. Emma looks at him for a moment before making her decision and pulling herself off the bench, lifting her paperwork up so he can see it for himself.

"This is the range of motion you had when you first came in on both arms," She says, pointing with the edge of her pen. "That’s muscle damage you received after the bite and that number right  _there_  is the projected range of motion you’d get back.”

Then she pauses and flits her eyes up to his, enjoying the hopeful, patient confusion in his eyes. God, they really are that blue.

"You’ve passed it significantly. As long as you keep up your visits here, you can get back out in the water and do your thing."

The toothy grin of his doesn’t resurface, to her shock. He is smiling, he looks happy, but it’s not the one she was waiting for, the triumphant and slightly smug one he’s been giving her while they run through his usual workouts. Emma doesn’t understand why the news isn’t making him happy, because it  _should_. He’s someone who was born to be in the water, better at curling his board around a wave than he is at walking, and she’s seen him fearlessly take on enough foul-weather competitions to know he’s not afraid.

Except he is.

And she can tell he knows she knows the minute their eyes meet again and he lets out a shaky laugh, rubbing his fingers over the bright raised scar along his wrist.

"D’you know I haven’t been in the ocean since it happened? It’s not because of the shark, I know it’s not, because I can’t put my finger on what it is, and the longer I put it off the worse it gets, I know, but —”

“— but it doesn’t help knowing when the fear’s still there,” Emma finishes, following his eyes to the same spot on the floor he’s staring at. She might be new at this, but she knows that fear and anxiety are the obstacles her patients are really fighting, not a broken leg or a pinched nerve or a muscle tear. She keeps reminding herself she doesn’t know him, even as she scoots a little closer to lay a comforting hand on his forearm (or she tries, she only ever makes it to the space on the bench between them before losing her nerve) and even as the words topple out of her before she knows what she’s saying.

She has an idea, and she doesn’t know if she’s overstepping boundaries or if she’s going to piss him off and send him running to somewhere where the staff don’t know who he is when she does it, but suddenly she’s ripping his paperwork out of her binder and turning the paper over, scrawling Goals for Jones in large handwriting at the very top of the sheet.

"That’s your writing hand, right?" She nods, handing all of it over to him. He nods back, not quite following her until he sees what she’s written.

"I want you to write four for yourself. I don’t care what they are, short-term or long-term, as long as they involve something you do with your arms."

He’s looking at her like he has no idea what she’s saying, which makes a lot of sense because she has no idea in hell what  _she’s_  doing making empty promises to her patients, even if they’ve only been implied so far. It’s an all-but-unspoken rule around their clinic so that patients don’t get their hopes up, but she figures a man who exceeds his own prognosis knows all about rule bending.

And so she waits patiently while he writes, some of his goals taking more time than others, and looks them over with a cool, clinical eye once he gives it to her again.

_One - Dress shirt buttons._

_Two - Shaving._

_Three - Modified gym workouts._

_Four - Hold Emma Swan’s hand._

Her cheeks are downright scarlet as she realizes what he’s written, and the bastard’s only smiling wider. She’s regretting wanting to see it at all because she  _knows_  lines are being crossed, lines that might get her fired before she even gets her foot in the door in the medical world.

But then those stupid blue eyes of his find hers and something soft in her takes away her rapidly rising anxiety over this man and his flirty looks and the way he makes it feel like they’ve just met on the street instead of in a professional setting, replacing it with a reminder of why she wanted this job in the first place.

She scrawls her goal under his and then leaves it on the bench between them, reaching through empty air to take his hand in hers.

"One down," she smiles, "four to go."

* * *

Emma has the list in her pocket the morning they walk along the beach together, hands linked just like they were the day she first met him. It’s a bright morning now that the sun’s risen, waking up the gulls he claim sound more endearing than ear-piercing once you get used to them. Wet sand scrapes around both of their bare feet as they stand in front of the ocean, Emma in a large hoodie that belongs to him and him in that stupid tank shirt of his that she loves so much.

They’re the only ones around for miles out here, even though the pier’s only a couple thousand yards away. The entire sky is a gentle gradient of orange into yellow, too, making the sea look almost green in comparison. He tries making a comment about how it matches her eyes to ease the tension and she nudges her shoulder into his arm, squeezing his hand despite the cheesiness of his words.

Of course he realizes she’s nervous, too. Of course he’s trying to be there for her even as she’s trying to be there for him.

Emma turns and looks at him seriously for a moment, dropping his hand and assessing the look in his eyes. He seems ready, or ready as he’ll ever be, and in the end she just lets her gut lead her like she did when they first met. He’s way better at reading her than she’ll ever be, but they’ve always understood each other.

"Race you, Jones," she yells as she’s halfway to the water, his sweatshirt tossed inside out on the sand as she runs. She’s giggling and shrieking and completely scaring the seagulls out of the water where they were bobbing peacefully before, and the water’s just as chilly as she was expecting it to be, but when she hears him splashing in after her she can’t feel anything but joy.

Killian scoops her up in his arms, both holding her up beautifully while he smiles at her through the sandy spray her feet are kicking up, and when she slides back down to stand on the sandy ocean floor beneath their feet he doesn’t let go. His hand comes up, though, and brushes a lock of her wet hair behind her ear, leaving goosebumps in its wake as his thumb lingers at her cheekbone.

"You’re incredible, Swan."

His voice has too much in it, and she narrows her eyes in confusion.

"You’re the one who just got back in the ocean after seven months."

And he’s inching further toward her lips with every word she speaks, shaking his head and cupping her cheek and pulling her to him with help from the arm at her back. He just smiles, looking at her like she’s just handed him a gift more precious than any surfboard or championship trophy or award of recognition he’s ever received.

And he kisses her in the ocean. His lips find hers between smiles and soft sighs and hands tangled in hair that’ll likely have sand in it for weeks. He kisses the cold from her skin and pulls them even further into the ocean he’d been so worried over before. Emma doesn’t know exactly when the water gets too deep for her to stand but she smiles hard enough to break their kiss when she feels him support her when her feet can’t find the bottom. He feels sunlight in her hair while she tastes salt in his mouth, and they spend the rest of the morning swimming, only coming out of the water when a pack of seagulls begins swarming on the sweater she’d left behind.


	2. Dress Shirt Buttons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Killian and Emma tackle the first item on their list.

Killian’s drumming his hand and what remains of his other arm against his steering wheel as he waits at the stoplight, keeping time with the music playing on the radio. He and Emma have been working together for a little over three weeks now, and he’d be lying to himself if he tried saying he wasn’t actually  _enjoying_ his therapy sessions now.

 _Emma Swan_. Her name lingers in his mind as he turns onto the highway and sets off for home, the glimmering bay spread and yawning wide to his left. Whatever squall had hit them before is gone now, which means more treacherous surf conditions for anyone actually going out in the water. He’s too ingrained in his regular routine to stop himself from thinking about it every time he steps outside, which is often, and it seems to bite into him worse than that bloody shark did.

It’s been several months since the attack, long enough for reporters to stop pounding on his door and move on to the actual competitors in the end-of-year surf contest the town puts on every year. He’s almost positive they’ve tried contacting the other judges to confirm the rumors about his progress and he’s never been more glad to be working with a group of complete strangers. It’s why he quietly switched therapy centers as well — if they can't  _find_  him, they can't badger him with questions he’s answered fifty times already. _  
_

He almost feels like a hypocrite, though, for not being bothered that Emma recognized him. He chose the place for its reputation on working with a bunch of elderly patients, people who didn’t typically follow extreme outdoor sports very well, and he’d mistakenly figured the staff would mirror their clientele. Emma is the exact opposite of what he’d been expecting in the best possible way, for several reasons.

The fact that she’s in his passenger seat right now being one of them.

* * *

 

They’d spent three weeks getting to know each other at his appointments. Three weeks of him pushing at the edges of the careful walls she puts up while he pulls resistance bands, of friendly banter while she wraps his stump up with a heat pad to take the phantom pain away, of nearly forgetting about her little proposed sheet of goals until he sees her lingering pointedly in his paperwork. Killian’s quick to realize she's  _nervous_  about bringing it up again, trying to gauge whether she’s going to upset him with a reminder of it. He hasn’t mentioned it since either, and he suspects that’s part of the problem. 

Killian leans over as though he has no idea what she’s looking at and bites back a laugh as she starts. Emma’s told him before that she claims that she’s not excitable, that she prides herself on having a strong stomach, but apparently he’s not the only hypocrite in town. She’s dressed more casually now, through with trying to impress her supervisors now that the stability of her job seems to be sinking in, and he’s almost sure by the sleek curves of her calves that she’s some kind of athlete, too.

“It’s just the list of goals I made you write when we first — when  _you_ first came in,” she supplies, tilting the binder in his direction so he can see. To his surprise the back page is now almost completely covered in tiny notes she’s made for herself, adding comments beneath each of the goals he’d written. Killian lingers on the thin, dark letters she’s written under goal number one —  _dress shirt buttons —_ and realizes it’s a small list of the exact hand and arm equipment they’ve been using for the better part of the month.

“Did you have to order those for me?” He asks, a little floored by her gesture if he’s guessed correctly.

“Not exactly,” she admits a little  _too_ quickly for him to be completely wrong. “You were the excuse I needed to replace the old stuff.”

“Is that all I am to you?” He whines, pretending to be extremely affronted. “Here I thought we were friends.”

Emma wrinkles her nose at him then, already too used to the games he plays to buy it for a second.

“I didn’t hear you complaining earlier.”

“Yes you did, just not because of that.”

He likes to whine and gripe through the especially boring parts of their sessions, half because of the way she plays along. It’s the reason he can joke about them being friends; somewhere between appointment number one and today they’ve managed to siphon little bits and pieces of each other into memory.

For instance, he knows she worked herself through community college to get here, traveling all the way across the country to do it. She knows he earned the scar on his cheek from a longboarding accident gone awry  _—_ having gloves that help you turn down tight curves in the road only helps so much when you’re airborne and headed for the nearest streetlamp  _—_ and spent a good three minutes teasing him over his apparent knack for survival. Emma has never once shied away from his arm or danced around the circumstances involving his injury, and God help him if it doesn’t feel like a warm offshore wind every single time they discuss it. Maybe it’s because she’s used to dealing with this every day of her week, or maybe it’s just Emma herself, but he doesn’t feel like he’s missing any part of himself when he’s around her.

In the end it’s that feeling that pushes him to ask her at the end of their appointment. Somehow he convinces her, using the fact that he’s her last patient of the day to his advantage and playing his  _friends can spend time together, Swan, it’s not like I’m proposing_  card to the full, that it’s not completely crazy for her to come spend an hour with him at home while he tries on button-down shirts. He even offers to drive when she mentions she took the bus to work that day, and his entire nervous system seems to celebrate when she finally agrees.

“One hour," she stipulates, holding a slender finger up just inches away from his nose, "and if I have to hear one Bob Marley song play while you drive I’m jumping out of the car." 

* * *

Killian can tell Emma’s surprised to see his house the moment they pull up in his driveway. The outside of the beach cottage looks more or less like any other along the street, complementing the bright blues and greens that fill the street with a yellow that almost matches the color of her hair. He wonders if she was expecting a mansion, given the successful career he’s on an indefinite break from, but he only holds the door open for her as she walks into his living room. 

"Apologizes for the mess, lass. It’s been a little more difficult to tidy up with just one hand to work with.”

“Are you kidding?” Emma exclaims, brushing her hand against the paddle board that serves as a decent excuse for a handrail on his stairway. Her fingers linger on the signatures covering the board but she doesn’t seem to recognize any in particular. “This is cleaner than my condo was when I moved in.”

He laughs and tries to look at the lower level of his home through her eyes, supposing his definition of clean and hers are a little different. There are catalogues and bills scattered across his koa coffee table and a few mugs left in the sink, but otherwise she insists it looks like he had a live-in maid.

“I’ve just had more time on my…hand,” he shrugs, earning a pained laugh from her.

“You’ve got fifty-seven more minutes with me, Jones, are you going to spend it making terrible jokes?”

Her brow’s raised in a poor imitation of his, he thinks, but he takes the hint and leaves her to explore the rest of his downstairs as he goes up to retrieve one of the very few dress shirts he owns. There’s almost no reason to own a long-sleeve shirt here, even in winter, because there’s no weather cold enough that a sweatshirt or anorak jacket won’t fix.

Killian finally finds it at the very back of his closet and shucks off his favorite tank shirt, slipping his arms though the soft cotton sleeves as he walks back downstairs. It takes him a minute to find Emma, since she’s slipped out onto the back porch to admire the distant coast.

“That right there is the reason I bought this house, in case you hadn’t figured it out already,” he says, this time deliberately trying to startle her. It doesn’t seem to work until she turns around and sees his chest between the two open halves of his shirt front and her mouth pops open. He grins and opens his mouth to tease her about it but she interrupts him before he can even take a breath.

“It’s not that,” she insists, a little too much edge in her voice. “You just picked a really hard set of buttons to work with."

He looks down at himself and sees she’s right, that the buttons are very thick and the holes of his shirt haven’t been broken in well enough. Killian just looks back up at her with a shrug, figuring they’ve still got a good forty-five minutes left for him to try.

His fingers fumble over the first two but he hits a rhythm with the rest, more than thankful that she hasn’t uttered one word of encouragement to him yet. She seems more interested in asking him about the flotsam and jetsam he uses as decoration around his home. She calls it cheesy and stereotypical, but he just laughs as he slides the fifth button into place.

"The ocean’s always been part of my life,” he explains fondly, looking out over the dunes at the ebbing afternoon tide. “Figured I might as well be close to it as I could get.”

He doesn’t tell her about the anxious bubble that’s been growing steadily ever since the attack, even though he can see the question in her eyes. It’s not one of the goals he put on his sheet, and he’s already stretched himself thin enough by asking her to come along and help. Apparently it’s Emma’s turn to surprise him, though, because she just pushes herself off the deck rail she’s been leaning against to come and open his shirt.

He feels his heart rate pick up when she draws close and he can smell some kind of citrusy shampoo radiating off her hair. Emma’s almost a head shorter than him and he’s close enough to count her eyelashes as she looks down at his shirt, methodologically unbuttoning it one by one.

“These are ridiculous, and I’m using two hands,” she mutters more to herself than him. His grin serves as his reply.

“There,” she says, finally looking up at him as she draws her hand away. He’s not sure if he imagines the way her hand lingers on the edge of the bottom of his shirt as she steps away, but he likes to think it was deliberate. She prompts him to do it again, lets him unbutton himself once he’s run through it several times and leaves him on his own for the last circuit. When she reappears, she’s holding a familiar piece of paper in her hand. 

“Ready to cross it off?”

He nods and drops his hand from his collar, following her back through the door into the kitchen. He draws a neat line through his own handwriting and slides the paper back over to her with a satisfied look on his face, only noticing how much time has passed since they first arrived. Emma follows his eyes to the microwave clock and they both apologize simultaneously to each other as if on cue. Their laughter mixes in the air immediately afterward and Killian swears it’s even better than her smile.

“Can I at least give you a ride home for all the trouble?” He offers, expecting a no. Emma Swan doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do, even on the clock.

He figures that’s why he grins from ear to ear when she nods and grabs her bag. 

 


	3. Shaving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Killian tackle list item #2.

Emma no longer carries their list of goals around, just like she no longer needs to use the hastily-drawn map to his house that she made him scrawl right next to it. He only lives a few miles from the therapy clinic, but it had still taken her a few trips back and forth to memorize the way to his house. The back roads he told her to take are all lined with seagrass-covered dunes and swampy, pampas grass-filled ditches, and are completely seared into her memory now. 

Kind of like the image of him finding her on his porch with his shirt completely open and his tanned, stupidly sculpted torso is. 

Emma knows it’s stupid, that she and Ruby (and subsequently most of the town) saw him in much less when they went to that ridiculous documentary premiere, but none of that had been anything like seeing him  _right in front of her_. Even making up that excuse about his buttons barely saved her from the embarrassment that came with him catching her staring like that. 

But now he calls her his friend. Repeatedly. Whenever he can, in fact, and always loud enough so the whole reception area can hear him on their way out. He’s started to schedule his appointments strategically so he can steal her away in the early afternoons and make her follow him to the dilapidated seafood shack he likes to frequent, and at this point Emma’s just started ignoring the looks from her coworkers when she follows him through the sliding doors into the parking lot. She figures they’ll stop when everyone realizes they’re just friends. (Friends who see each other at least once every week, who know each other’s milkshake order of choice, who occasionally catch each other staring when they think they’re distracted.)

When August finally barrels in and drives away all the rainstorms that July poured over their sleepy little coastal town, it leaves Emma to deal with hazy morning heat that has her hair sticking to her neck before her coffee’s even done brewing in the morning. Ponytails have become necessary for her sanity. It swings behind her as she walks across Killian’s grass and knocks on his front door, only waiting a few impatient seconds before she turns the knob herself.

Today is goal number two on the list, she’s decided, and she’s more than a little excited to cross it off.

* * *

Somehow they’ve come to this strange, unspoken arrangement together. Whatever it is that they’re tackling, whether it’s the therapy exercises in one of his  _actual_  appointments or a massive basket of fish tacos or even one of the items on his goal list, Emma and Killian always finish it together. Killian brings out the competitive side in her, apparently, and what’s more is he actually challenges her as much as she challenges him.

She wishes he would do it with less suggestive eyebrow raises and without standing so unnecessarily close, but then he wouldn’t be so much fun.

Emma stands in front of his hall bathroom sink and plays with the knobs on either side of the faucet, trying to coax the steady stream of water to the perfect temperature while Killian runs off upstairs to get his shaving supplies. It’s a feeble distraction at best (the water was perfectly warm two minutes ago, and now she’s just playing with levels of cold and hot.) Every time she looks at herself in the mirror she sees eyes that looks way too frantic for what she’s about to help him do, and no amount of blinking seems to get rid of it. He joins her entirely too soon, bounding in to the half bath completely oblivious to the reason behind her expression…for now, that is. He’s developed this uncanny ability to read her and it’s only a matter of time before he realizes she’s nervous. 

“Oh, come on,” she groans as he enters, wearing the  _same_   _damn tank shirt_  as before. “I know you own more than one shirt. I’ve seen proof.”

“Please, Swan, you love this shirt,” he grins back, razor and shaving cream in hand and a towel slung over his arm. It has an anchor sewn into the corner, she notices, completely unsurprised that his affinity for nautical decoration continues in the upstairs of his home. “You wouldn’t complain about it so much if you didn’t.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing. Who complains about stuff they like?”

“You do. You don’t bother wasting any words on the things you actually despise…except for the corner spot in the parking lot.”

“It’s practically a  _sinkhole_!” Emma cries defensively, ripping her hands away from the sink knobs to face him fully. She gets about three sentences into her tirade before she realizes what he’s coaxed her into and stops mid-sentence. “That’s cheating. You brought it up.”

“Still counts." 

Killian slides toward her as she clears room in front of the sink, leaning her hip against his countertop and trying to give him as much space as the tiny room will allow as he sticks his fingers under the water. She frowns when he turns the cold knob a little bit to the right but says nothing as he leans his head down near the stream and scrubs his hand all over his chin and cheeks.

Emma’s never seen a man shave before, ever. Commercials with clean-faced models don’t count, even if the Old Spice jingle is catchy, so she doesn’t beat herself up too much for paying close attention to Killian as he washes his face. His hands are surprisingly smooth for someone who’s spent a life perpetually outdoors. Short fingernails comb and scratch through the reddish-brown scruff at his jaw and she absentmindedly trails her fingertips along the curve near her own cheek, wondering what the difference feels like. Emma digs her own fingernails into her neck when she suddenly realizes she’s going to know  _exactly_  what it feels like in a moment. Like clockwork, he turns to look up at her with a curious expression on his face.

"What’s that look for?”

“Nothing,” she responds with something that sounds close enough to a casual laugh. “I just realized I could accidentally slice you open.”

“Is that all?” He wonders, smirking sideways up at her. “You’ve shaved your legs before, haven’t you?”

“Legs give you a whole lot more space to work with.”

“That’s very true,” he responds, glancing down toward her feet before straightening his spine again. He pushes the tube of shaving cream toward her as he submerges his towel in the water and holds it over his chin, and Emma feels another little jolt run through her.

She turns the bottle around and studies it intently to give herself a second to calm down, but Killian interrupts her before she can get down to the actual directions.

“Less is more, Swan. You’ll have a very hard time of helping me if you can’t actually see the hair anymore.”

He seems to understand she needs him joking and teasing her, and for a rare moment Emma’s actually thankful that he can see right through her. She grins and puts a quarter-sized dollop of the cream in her hand, trying to figure out what part of him to cover first. 

“Are you sure? Santa Claus might be a good look for you.”

It takes less time than she thought it would, running her hand over his cheeks and across his chin and coating him evenly in the foamy shaving cream. It smells like suntan lotion for some reason, even though the product claims to be unscented, and Emma finds it really calming. She’ll take anything she can get at this point, now that she’s basically caressing his face while he gives her one of his smaller, more genuine smiles. Part of her is dying to ask him what that look is supposed to mean, but another part already knows and keeps her mouth firmly shut until she’s done.

“All right, Redbeard, you’re all lathered up,” she announces needlessly, running her hand under the tap again as he inspects her work. 

“Great,” Killian responds happily, picking up the razor and wets it as well. She must imagine the note of pride in his voice, because when she looks back to him he’s holding the razor up to her eye level and giving her his most solemn look yet. “I’m about to show you just how impossible it will be for you to kill me with this.”

“You say that now,” She retorts, coming to stand in front of him again. He half-leans, half-sits against the edge of the sink as he starts working the edge of the blades across the corner of his cheek, turning that entire side of his face toward the mirror so he can check his work. “Wouldn’t an electric razor be a little easier to work with?”

“Easier and more  _expensive_.”

“But you only have to buy it once.”

“Do you know how much electric blade replacements cost?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t be arguing with me if you did.”

Emma huffs and refuses to respond to that, ignoring the triumphant look his reflection gives her. Soon enough he’s made his way across the entire side of his face and he’s washing the razor off, placing it in her hand instead and telling her it’s time to see what she’s learned.

Both of them ignore the fact that these lessons are supposed to be for him when she grips his razor in her hand and rests her other hand along the column of his throat, using her index finger to push the side of his jaw up and toward the light. They continue to banter on about the pros and cons of shaving technology as she works to trim his face, using the same amount of pressure she saw him use so he doesn’t look too threadbare at the end of all of this. She finds herself wishing his jaw wasn’t set so close to right angle (for  _several_  reasons) as she moves, nearly finishing the entire job without nicking him once.

Except for his stupid,  _stupid_ chin.

To his credit, he doesn’t hiss nearly as loud as she does when she drops the razor into the sink, fumbling for that washcloth he’d been using earlier. She apologizes, knowing exactly how his face must be stinging right now and practically shoves the wet cloth into his mouth as she tries to clean off the blood. It was a small thing, she knew it, but he was physically trusting her a hundred different ways already by getting to know her and letting her into his life, and she didn’t want to let him down in any of them.

“Emma, relax,” he says, turning his mouth away and laughing at her panic. he presses his thumb firmly over the cut and raises both his eyebrows at her, wide eyes underlining his statement. “Statistically, it was either you or me. D'you know how many times I’ve nicked myself in that same spot?”

“I’m still sorry.”

“Stop being sorry and let me finish this up.”

She hands him the razor again and watches him use his stump to pull his skin tight like she had, only taking three or four more strokes before turning his face back and forth in the mirror. His reflection grins at her again, still a little soapy around the edges, and she gives him a genuine smile back. The hard lines of his jaw are a little easier to see now, and she can tell his skin is paler beneath the remaining scruff. She wonders if he can catch a sunburn like that while he washes his face again, so when he turns and looks at her expectantly, she’s a little caught-off guard.

(Because that’s not a regular thing with him around, not at all.)

“Well?” He asks, as if she’s being slow on the uptake. “Time to scratch this off the list, isn’t it?”

“Oh!” Emma says, comprehension filling her. “I didn’t bring it.”

“That’s breaking tradition, Swan,” he tsks.

“I guess we can just cross two off next time,” she says, shrugging herself out of his bathroom because there’s no longer a good reason for her to be standing so close to him. 

“Next time?” He asks, and damn it if she can’t hear the expectant grin in his voice without even  _looking_  at him. “When’s that supposed to be?”

She turns around to meet his eyes with bravery she wishes she could have summoned a lot earlier in the day, stepping right into the afternoon sun coming through his kitchen windows.

“You tell me.”


	4. Modified Gym Workouts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Killian go for list item #3.

They’ve never met at her house. Before now, it’s never seemed like anything significant to him, but that’s because he’s usually happy to see her no matter where they are, especially after a two-week stint without seeing her at all. 

(It was bound to happen eventually — she had regular evaluations to attend and piles of post-appointment paperwork that made them  _both_ cringe whenever she brought it up, so when she did get enough time to meet and work with him, it always seemed to him that she silently preferred to meet in places that didn’t make her feel like she was carrying all of her obligations with her.)

But now he wonders as he taps his thumb against the wheel, his other arm resting comfortably in his lap as the late summer breeze twists through the interior of his vehicle, whether there’s anything more to it. Now that they’ve spent the better part of the summer getting to know each other (and the more he learns about Emma Swan, the more he wants to know) he’s starting to realize their time together is drawing to a close. Potentially.

Emma’s words from the last time they met are still swirling around in his mind. Her  _“you tell me"_ has been haunting him for some time now, making him feel like a teenager as he lays awake at night analyzing the lilt and measure of her playful voice. They had to mean  _something_ , but whether that something is a thing she wanted to extend beyond their scheduled therapy visits, he still isn’t completely sure. Emma opened the door, he thinks, but he has no idea how to step through.

Before, his life had been about surfing and the waves that danced beneath him when he rode. He’d been defined by what he could do between the curl of a wave and the waxed surface of his surfboard, for his strength and resiliency in the water. People had cared about him in ways that were both shockingly genuine and appallingly shallow before the accident, but after it felt like all attention had turned from his skill to pinpoint on the hand he could never get back. He’s a walking trauma story, and Emma is one of a handful of people (the cashier at his favorite grocery store, the mailman that comes on weekends, his elderly neighbor who insisted on sending over meals for the entire first week of his recovery) who didn’t seem to care about the difference.

A small part of him always tries to argue, saying Emma hadn’t known him at all beforehand.  _It’s not fair to compare her to a host of others that drew away from you after the attack had occurred_ , the voice told him.  _She might have shied away sooner than the rest_ , it said.

He finds himself lingering on those thoughts more than the ones of friends and acquaintances he’s lost, though. There’s a stronger voice from within always reminding him of how nice it is that he would never have to know with her. Emma’s almost the complete opposite, the way she’d met him and launched into her mission to help him recuperate with more enthusiasm than even he’d felt at first, and now? Now he’s in more trouble than ever, because he’s not sure if he wants to miss her at all.

* * *

Killian parks right next to her despite the near-empty lot, smiling at how unnecessary it is since no one else’s cars are anywhere near theirs. It feels a bit like a parallel to his life now that he lingers on the image of his vehicle next to hers and secluded from the rest of the world. It’s not nearly as lonely as it should look, somehow. To him, it just makes sense.

He finds her waiting for him the minute he pushes the door open, fingers tapping against the empty reception desk. It’s no small thing to him that she lights up the second she registers it’s him walking in, even though she takes a step to retreat further into the building.

"Signed us in already,” she explains with excitement in her voice, enthusiasm that seems to exist chiefly for visits with him. “You didn’t forget anything, did you?”

“If I have, I don’t know that I’ve forgotten it.” Killian shakes off the strange anxiousness that always seems to try to settle on his shoulders when he’s around her in favor of enjoying the moment. He shows her the towel resting on his shoulder and shakes his water bottle in his hand as proof. “What strange torture device will you be strapping me into today?”

“That shoulder wheel was  _not_  a torture device,” Emma tells him with an eye roll that’s somehow both endearing and commanding all at once. “I promise that you’re going to like what we do today.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You will.”

Her eyes are sparkling, and he’s hopelessly lost. She could be telling him anything at this point, really, and he’d still feel the same familiar pull in her direction. As it is, she’s literally pulling him down the hall until they find themselves in a large, sun-soaked room. They’re two of about five people total in this part of the gym, which is a stark contrast to every other exercise gym he’s ever stepped into. He’s glad she respects his need to stay secluded from the general public for the time being, given how everyone usually reacts to his arm (D _oes it still hurt? Can you still feel it sometimes?_ and the rare but always-dreaded  _You poor thing, will you ever surf again?_ ) but he can’t help but wish he had something to distract him from the beautiful, driven, compassionate woman in front of him.

“You said you’d just signed us in,” he says with traces of awe and delight in his voice. “What’s this?”

“Told you you’d like it.”

She’s brought in Indo Boards for the both of them to use today. She’s given him a chance to do what he loves without having to go back in the water, in the public eye. She’s a bloody  _mind reader_  and suddenly the handful of clients milling about the gym vanish from his mind when she smiles.

He shakes his head at her and raises both arms in clear surrender, and then he sets his water and towel down on the floor next to the boards she’s procured for them. Shaking off thoughts about the effort she’s gone to and the excitement he sees in her eyes, he prods one with his foot experimentally. It feels a bit like coming home already.

“Don’t you want to take your shoes off? Get the full effect?” Emma asks.

“We’ll need a bit less clothing if we truly want the full effect, lass,” he responds, just to see what color her cheeks will burn when she hears it. He’s rewarded with a lovely peach-pink and the way her eyes dart toward the ground as she toes off her shoes, and he follows suit. 

And then he’s laughing completely outright when it turns out she’s not quite a natural when it comes to maneuvering the thing herself. She explains that they’re fairly new to her practice ( _“Shut up, Jones, ninety percent of my clients are elderly and would break a hip on one of these things”_ ) so he takes the opportunity to teach her a thing or two.

“First off, relax your shoulders,” he tells her, rolling his own as he stays steady on the board to demonstrate. “and bend your knees a bit more.”

“Shouldn’t I be the one doing the instructing?”

“I’ll shut up as soon as you can steady yourself.”

Eventually, she does, and it’s then that she slips back into the Emma he’s gotten to know, asking him for the stories behind the trinkets on his shelves at home and why he always orders the same thing at the drive-thrus they make a habit of visiting after workouts. He shoots back, telling her she has no right to complain when she always makes him park in the same spot while they eat (“ _I like being in the shade, Jones, it’s not_ that _weird”_ ) and that’s when he realizes how comfortable he is.

It’s not  _exactly_  news to him, that he feels like himself in her presence. It’s just that this specific day had been the most daunting out of everything they’ve tried to do and he doesn’t feel insecure at all. He feels like life could stretch on like this and feel normal, almost better than before, and suddenly he wonders if he’s ever taken the time to really thank Emma Swan before now. Not the passing thank you’s he offers her after each of their therapy sessions end, either. A real one. It sticks in his mind after they step away from the boards and move on to other exercises, ones she’s especially modified for him to be able to do with one hand gone. 

(He wonders how he ever got by without her when she leaves to refill their water bottles.)

“A word, Swan?” He asks her after they sign themselves out and he carries both Indo Boards for her under his arm. It’s late afternoon, so golden sun completely drenches them both as she stows them in the trunk of her car and looks back his way.

And damn him, but he chickens out, despite the encouraging smile she’s sending his way.

“I just wanted to remind you to cross that one off of our list when you get home. It’s with you, right?”

“It’s not—” Emma opens her mouth to say something in reply, but furrows her brow and seems to think better of it. He gets the impression she’s remembering something she’s forgotten, but it only takes her a second to come back to him. “Don’t worry, Jones. You’re not the only one who doesn’t usually forget things.”

He leans against her car again when they eat, both of them stealing onion rings out of the greasy cardboard box sitting on top of her Bug. The shady spot definitely is better than the full sun, he reluctantly admits with a roll of his eyes that matches her earlier reaction. He can tell when she recognizes the movement by the way she laughs and says  _told you so_ , and now he’s wishing he’d done something that took longer to respond to. She tosses their trash in the garbage and says see you later (never goodbye, he’s noticed) and then it’s him in the shade, wishing he had half a clue of what to do with himself.

* * *

Emma calls him early one morning, waking him up by the ringer on his phone. He’s sure they don’t have anything planned for the day as he rubs sleep from his eyes, asking her if everything is okay and bracing himself in case it isn’t.

“I’m fine. I just need a favor.”

“At this hour?”

“Has to be before I go in for my morning shift,” she explains. “Come outside.”

“What?” He gets up from bed and peeks out his window, but there’s no yellow Beetle parked out on the curb. He can’t see her, which makes him more confused, and had he two hands he would have pinched himself to make sure wasn’t really still in bed.

“Just open your door,” she adds impatiently. He can practically see her foot bouncing with anticipation. “It’s not going to take long.”

“All right, Swan, just give me a moment.”

“Fine, but only one. See you.”

Killian pulls the front door open and is greeted by his scrubby front lawn. Confusion settles deeper in his brow as he leans out and looks around the porch. It isn’t until he takes a tentative step out into the morning air and stubs his toe on a small cardboard box that he fully accepts his consciousness. He’s definitely awake, and she’s left him a package.

It’s asking him to  _OPEN ME_  in what looks like orange highlighter, so he does. When he finally rips the extensive amount of tape from the joint of the package he breaks the morning silence with confused laughter. She’s given him a pair of colorful, adult-sized  _arm floaties_. Their little list of goals is sitting on top of it, too, and he thinks it’s a reminder of how far they’ve come until he looks properly.

__~~One - Dress shirt buttons.  
Two - Shaving.  
Three - Modified gym workouts.~~  
 ~~Four - Hold Emma Swan’s hand.~~  
  
And there, under his own handwriting, is a new one. One he’s probably seen before, he realizes, but never paid attention to, seeing as she’d always scribbled little doodles and notes to herself on their goals list before.

_Five - Get back in the ocean._

His phone buzzes with a text almost seconds after he reads it and processes what it means. “Did you open it?” She asks.

It’s been  _months_ since he’s touched open ocean, and he hasn’t even told her how scared he is to do so, but all of a sudden with this paper in his hand and a set of  _floaties_  in his arms, he thinks he’s ready.

“I did.”

* * *

His surprise at the gift and the note is nothing compared to the surprise on her face when she finds him waiting for her when she clocks out of work. She looks amazingly happy to see him, which gives him boldness he didn’t have while he was tossing his keys to himself like an idiot in the middle of the parking lot.

“Hey,” she tells him, tugging her long hair out of its ponytail. “Did they fit?”

“I didn’t try them on,” he says, feeling a strange mix of seriousness and joy spread over his face as she gets closer. He needs to get it out now, before she turns his thoughts to addled nonsense. “Thought you might want to be there for that bit.”

She looks at him with a bit of wonder then, stopping just short of being able to stand in his shadow. “I didn’t know if you were ready yet. I know it might not have been that funny of a joke because of how all of this happened, and I didn’t want you to feel like I was pressuring —.”

He kisses her, and his heart roars in victory when it only takes her the briefest moment to respond. His keys clatter to the ground next to his feet as his hand slips up and cups the side of her neck, fingers playing at the edges of that sunshine hair he’s been waiting to feel. She’s soft and inviting and completely perfect, and the kiss breaks as both of them smile in tandem.

“I know,” he breathes, shifting so his thumb swipes at the dent in her chin. “I’m ready when you are.”


	5. Surfing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last item on the list.

“Emma, love, I’ve got us, just —”

Her giddy shriek drowns him out as she stumbles, launching them both into the blue water below for the fourth time that morning. He bobs up out of the water laughing, feeling the tug of the board’s leash at his ankle as he goes to retrieve their paddle before it can float out of reach. Emma’s splashing him impatiently as he goes, as if she’s not the one who caused all this.

“Maybe you should have brought the floaties after all,” she quips, folding her arms over the side of the board as he climbs back on and situates himself in the middle of the large paddle board.

“Maybe you should quit sabotaging your own lessons, Swan.”

She makes relatively quick work of getting back on the board with only a little help from his arm on her waist, skimming across her skin as he holds the paddle on his other side. He’s had the pleasure of watching the sun darken her freckles on days like this, when sunscreen is forgotten more often than it should be and the pleasantly cool ocean distracts them from everything but each other. Reminding her once again that she has to stand close to him if she wants to keep her balance, he pulls them a bit farther out, paddling and twisting so they chart a straight course beyond the crashing waves. 

“I think you should steer us for a bit,” he tells her, pushing the paddle into her hand. “We’ve just about mastered standing,” 

“You want me to drive this thing?” She plunges the paddle in the water tentatively, pushing them a bit closer to the waves breaking near shore, and he takes the opportunity to guide her arm so she doesn’t go too far.

“It might be faster,” he says gently, shrugging a little, because they’re still getting used to this part. He’s finally starting to feel like himself in the water again, finally able to focus on having fun with her instead of fighting his own anxieties, but it’s an uphill battle they’re still fighting together. He knows she knows it, too, when she pauses and deliberately finds a way to turn around and face him without flipping them over.

“I don’t care about faster, okay?” She says, planting the fin of the paddle by her feet so she can reach for his hand with her free one and take his attention from the distant sunbathers on the shore. “There’s no rush out here. Just you and me.”

She always manages to soothe him like this, to remind him that he doesn’t have to be any better than he already is despite the doubts in his mind. It nearly always floors him that she feels this way. Emma’s smile pulls him from his own spiraling thoughts as the board rocks gently under their feet, and she only waits for his returning one before she twists around in front of him again, paddle diving in the water to propel them toward the surf.

If he doesn’t love her yet, he thinks, it’s only a matter of time.

* * *

It’s almost gradual enough that he doesn’t notice, but as the summer goes on Emma’s things start to find their way into his home. She’s wedged books between the large mapping volumes on his shelves in the living room, and one day her favorite old throw blanket found a home across one of his wicker chairs. On early mornings, she leaves laundry hanging from the side of the surfboard drying on his porch, and they smell like the detergent he buys. One night she stays and doesn’t leave and before he realizes it, it’s as if she’s never been anywhere else.

The best mornings are the ones where they both don’t even have to get out of bed, where they can just roll over and look out the door to his tiny roof porch and watch the sun rise up over the sound. If it’s warm, they sit right out on the weathered boards of the deck, avoiding splinters and balancing breakfast on their knees, tossing little pieces of egg they accidentally drop down in the grass below. 

Killian drops his fork and lifts her hand to his lips then, wishing her a good morning whispered between her knuckles. He never manages to convince her to stay home from work, even with the sleepy voice he knows she likes the best, but it’s always worth the smile she gives him when she goes.

She comes home that night and he asks her the question that keeps popping into his mind every time he passes her shirts drying on the stair rail surfboard.

“Are you still paying rent at your apartment?”

“Yeah,” she answers, setting her bag on the counter top. God help him, but she’s actually smiling as she sends a curious look his way. He thought this was going to be difficult, but of course she’s still surprising him. “What about it?”

“I was thinking…that you shouldn’t.”

“Why’s that?” Emma unclips her name tag from her shirt and drops it into her bag before giving him her full attention, sauntering up to him and smoothing her hand over the small pocket on the corner of his shirt. She wants to hear him say it out loud, and he’s more than happy to oblige.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he says, determined to keep this a serious conversation despite the teasing look in her eyes. Because he rather likes waking up with her next to him, even if her hair always gets stuck in his mouth, and he don’t want to remember what it feels like to be able to stretch his legs all the way across the bed without running in to her shins. He doesn’t want to come home and walk in the kitchen without her mug sitting in the sink and her shoes on the mat near the back porch all in a pile mixed with his. He starts to open his mouth to try and explain it all to her as best he can, but she catches him in a kiss before he’s said a word.

“I’ll call my landlord in the morning,” she tells him, and this time it’s him leaning in to catch her lips for another kiss.

* * *

“You’re still sandy,“ Emma remarks, running her fingers through his dark, damp hair after they finally pull themselves out of the water. She knows she’ll be washing sand out of her own hair for another week or so too, but when he pulls her into the hammock to sit in his lap she decides it doesn’t matter as much as she originally thought.

He’s doing his best to avoid getting ready for dinner, even though they both agreed to get dressed up for this particular excursion (or at least more dressed up than usual. The silky button-down and the jewelry are about as fancy as Emma gets these days, and he can’t say he minds.)

 _“You’re_  still sunburnt,” he answers back, leaning into her touch and laying his hand against her thigh. He can feel the heat of the sun on her skin just as much as he can see it in the pink on the apples of her cheeks, a color he knows will turn more red as the sun continues to sink. Every good sunburn takes a few hours to really show and hers is only just coming up.

He trails his thumb back and forth over her smooth skin, tracing around a freckle that he’s never seen before. Granted, they finished the list of goals she wrote out for him a year ago ago, the day he came into her clinic, but he likes to think he knows her better than almost anyone else. He’s almost sure, in fact.

Sometimes he thinks losing his hand might have been the best thing that ever happened to him, if it led them to each other.

"We can’t sit here forever,” Emma reminds him gently, doing absolutely nothing to extract herself from his hold and go back inside to grab her shoes. “We’re going to be late.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you there’s no such thing as  _late_  at the beach, Swan?”

"Only you, and only when we’re running late to to something.”

She smiles one of his favorite smiles then, tracing the curve of his eyebrow and looking at him like he’s just told her the best secret in the world. The small velvet box in the pocket of his most formal pair of shorts shifts slightly as he leans up to taste her smile, but it’s not time yet. He pushes it back out of sight as he allows Emma to pull them both off the hammock, hoping he gets to see that same smile when the right moment comes.


	6. Extra: Emma Learns to Surf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This little extra bit takes place before the events in the first part of the "Surfing" chapter. I got a request to write more of this fic from a lovely friend (as if I needed an excuse to jump back into this AU) so here it is!

The full morning sun is unrelenting, especially where the interior of her car is concerned. Every shard of light that cuts through the tangled trees lining the winding road flickers across her face, her arms, her thighs, warning her of the heat to come, but it’s a warning Emma finds herself easily distracted from. Thoughts of the day ahead of her are more than enough to drag her focus away.

She ran out of excuses a week ago. Her bills were paid, patient treatment plans written, apartment clean as it was ever going to be. Work’s slowing down, too — at least half of her patients are out of state for work conferences or vacations, and even Regina is beginning to get annoyed with her restlessness. Killian, on the other hand, has been waiting patiently for her to admit she’s ready for her first lesson. She can feel it every time a _good morning_ text greets her when she wakes, every time he drops by her desk with the lunch she forgot to pack, every time they sit on the beach and watch the ocean swallow the sun.

He’d given her the choice between sunrise and the hour after her last appointment ended. Emma picked the latter, tricking herself into believing the extra time would help her prepare. Like the few wispy clouds that had greeted her from her bedroom window when she woke up, time slipped away. Now she’s parked in the beach access lot, no clouds to be seen, and she’s more nervous than ever.

* * *

 

The air is dense, filled with a wet smokiness left over from last week’s wildfire, and the sand pricks fire into her ankles the moment she steps off the salt-bleached stairs. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, jogging in place as she considers the line of beach that spreads to her right. Several beachgoers are already setting up for the afternoon, burying umbrella stands and positioning chairs and running kites into the sky. Seagulls pick at the shoreline, chasing sandpipers into the wettest part of the sand and squawking whenever a jogger passes too close. Further down the beach is the pier, empty of all but the most stubborn fishermen. She spots a head of dark hair just beyond it, lurking where the beachgoers are the most sparse, and chuckles to herself.

He’s already shirtless, of course — she swears he’s solar-powered on some days —and totally focused on the board resting in front of him. The muscles in his arm flex and relax in a steady rhythm as he draws patterns of wax on the surfboard, and for a minute she just watches him. Then he smiles, and she realizes she’s been caught.

“Did you even bring sunscreen today?” She asks him, taking note of the many freckles that span his shoulders and course down his spine. If he’s not careful, he’ll turn out as red as the surfboard wax he’s using. He smiles and turns his head up before her eyes really make it to his face, and she’s caught again.

“I did, but I was hoping you would be willing to assist me with mine,” he flirts back, dropping his eyes to her bag. “Unless you were planning to set up camp.”

“I came _prepared,”_ she tells him, mild accusation in her voice. His keys are clipped to his water bottle, sitting next to a neatly folded towel, but other than that it’s just him and his board. Emma dumps her things next to his as she sits, trying to pay attention to what he’s doing in case the lesson’s already begun. “You’re putting a lot of that on the board.”

“It keeps your feet from slipping,” he explains, showing off his handiwork. “It’ll give you a better grip.”

“You’re assuming I can stay upright on this thing for more than a second,” she says warily, casting her eyes down to the nonsense patterns he’s coated into the board. The waves looked small when she first got to the beach, but she’s not sure calm waters will make a difference.

As if he can hear her thoughts, Killian nudges her knee with his.

“If you could get me back onto my surfboard, love, I’m certain I can get you standing on this one at least once today.” He punctuates the soft promise with a teasing smile, throwing a little challenge her way. It’s taken time to get here, to the place where he can be lighthearted about his fears and his injury, and that progress feels much more apparent now that they’re getting ready to surf on a public beach. It occurs to her just how far out of his own comfort zone he’s willing to go for her, how much he gives for her to freely take if she wants it.

Open hopefulness sits in his eyes, promising her she’ll be secure at his side, and Emma can’t find in her to do anything but nod and reach for the sunscreen.

* * *

 

He takes her waist-high into the water first, holding the surfboard at his side as it bobs smoothly in the water around them. The waves are throwing diamonds of sunlight into their eyes, and the water is clearer than it’s been in days. Emma can almost see her toenail polish from where she stands, her feet comically pale compared to his own. 

“The winds are favoring us today,” he tells her, pointing out a flag on the end of the pier, “but the current is still strong. It’ll try push us down the beach once we go deeper.”

“I don’t know if I’m going down the beach.”

“We’ll see. Let’s start with your pop-up.”

Emma’s exceedingly grateful that this was part of his therapy. Having even a little practice with the motions makes her feel more competent as she climbs onto the surfboard, steadying herself as best she can. He’s worked hard with her, taking her advice and instruction at face value, so it’s the least she can do in return even if she feels like everyone on the beach is watching her. After two tries, she finds herself standing upright on the board, looking down at him as he beams up at her.

“Well done, lass. Just like before,” he says, an almost ridiculous amount of pride in his voice. 

“I still think we should have brought the floaties,” Emma teases back, holding her arms outstretched to keep from falling again as a wave rolls beneath her. He braces the board before it can knock her over, though, and a sudden certainty blooms in her chest. Killian came back home to the ocean because he trusted her to help him recover from his accident. He’s standing here now, eyes shining up at her with all the sunlight in the sky, because he believes in her. Instead of feeling heavy with the burden of it, she feels light, and suddenly it’s easy to let that same trust steer her forward.

* * *

 

Hours pass in the blink of an eye again, except this time she’s enjoying herself without restraint. Emma is by no means a quick learner, but Killian has more than enough patience to make up for it, so they make it into deeper water eventually. He teaches her how to paddle into the waves, how to dive with and without the surfboard beneath. He’s by her side the whole time, coaching and encouraging and teasing when the moment calls for it, convincing her she’s doing a decent job even when she chickens out of taking what would have been a perfect starter wave.

“Can’t you get up here and show me?” Emma asks exasperatedly, tugging down her rash guard of a shirt as she climbs onto the board once more. It’s like the thing can smell fear, the way it falters when she attempts to control it.

“And give up my view from down here?” Killian grins at the color that rolls up her cheeks, triumphant any time he gets a rise out of her. He treads closer, laying his arm across the board to keep her still and gently curling his fingers around her ankle. His thumb sweeps over her skin, chasing away salt water and an errant clump of wax in a soothing rhythm. “You’re doing fine. I didn’t get it on my first day either.”

“I doubt that,” she tells him, strangely self-conscious with his focus trained on her the way it is. “You’re a natural.”

“Even naturals need to start somewhere,” he says softly.

Emma remembers the first time she met him, how small they had started, and how far they’d managed to come since then — _in more ways than one_ , she admits to herself, thinking of that morning on his front porch. They’ve had quiet moments since, but they’ve been rare, busy as she was with work. The quiet way he’s touching her now makes her wonder if he’s thought of it as often as she has since.

“I promise that you are making great progress,” he continues, pulling her out of her thoughts with words she’s said to him on days when he’s the one who’s unsure. “Give it another few days and you’ll get the basics down, just as I did. A good foundation takes time.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” His smile is tender, but only for a moment. It turns mischievous, a second’s warning before he yanks her ankle, tugging her down off the board and into the water in front of him. Emma yelps with surprise, sliding forward and almost taking him down with her.

“How is _that_ helping?” She asks moments later, blinking water out of her eyes and splashing him in protest. The surfboard floats nearby, tugging at her ankle leash and bumping into her shoulder, but Killian’s clearly abandoned lessons for now. In fact, he’s pulled her closer, his arm around her waist keeping her above water. It’s easy to blame her racing heart on the surprise, but it’s not entirely true.

“Sorry,” he answers unapologetically, brushing hair out of her eyes and off of her cheek. Emma realizes he’s holding her steady with the arm that was injured in the attack, not hesitating to put skin to skin. “I thought it might be easier if you came down here instead.”

“Easier for what?”

“For this,” he replies, sealing the last of the distance between them. The last of her annoyance melts as he kisses her, as he holds her to his chest, as she feels him trying his damnedest to keep a smile at bay. The press of his arm at her back steadies her as his stubble scratches against her chin, and she answers by dragging her nails through his hair, teasing him even now. For all the times she’s recounted that brief kiss on his porch, this is better, more playful and sure.

It’s like they aren’t even on a public beach. This kiss, the one that seems to have waited days to find its way to them, has found them in a moment free of insecurity and doubt, and she’s reluctant to do anything but press closer to him as the sun turns the sea into gold.

“You’re right,” she tells him as they break apart to breathe, not quite opening her eyes. “This would’ve been a little harder on the board.”

His answering laugh tastes even better than it sounds. “We’ll have to get a bigger one next time, then.”

Even teasing, she can hear the promise. Emma grins and hooks her foot behind his leg, tugging him under water this time, and they play-fight like two children in the water, their laughter trailing down the beach on the wind. It’s evening before they climb back onto the sand, fingers pruned from so much exposure to the ocean, but she can feel something’s shifted before they make it to the dry part of the sand. She feels it whisper to her as they walk up the beach and he talks about paddle board rentals. It lingers in the air as they dry off, his fingers twining with hers, their towels pressed together. It settles into her chest as they watch the sunset, warm wind tangling her hair and tickling those freckles on his back. She sees a future with him in the orange-pink of the clouds, in the first few stars blinking awake in the twilight, and it’s not nearly as terrifying as she thought it would be.


End file.
